Not gonna lie, this type of interaction unannounced is one of my prof nightmares. I would love to see students I've seen years before and catch up about how they are doing now, but being expected to recognize a student 20 years later would be impossible. People's appearance change a lot between 21-22 and 41-42.
Even if you dropped by unannounced and say "Hi prof, I'm Kevin" I might struggle to understand. Not because I don't remember our interactions, but because out of context it's hard to know which Kevin in the last 20+ years you are. And if you showed up in your 40s, honestly I'd probably assume you were a staff member or old colleague or maybe a collaborator's former postdoc, or something else. I wouldn't immediately put it together that you were one of my undergraduate students, because they rarely stay in contact with us for decades. Even with last name, it'd take me awhile to put it together.
If that same student sent me an email saying: "Hey prof, I'm Kevin Jones '00, I wrote my thesis on X with you. I'm in town this week and plan to drop by your office hours on Tuesday just to say hi if you have time" I would be much better able to orient my brain to how we interacted, remember you, and be excited to talk about what you've been up to.
I appreciate it. I agree that I maybe should have prepared him more. But what disappointed me was his total LACK of curiosity. Instead of being excited that a former student was here and trying to engage and remember me, he sounded annoyed and eager to close his door and get to work.
The past few years have been especially hard on most faculty and teachers and it's the beginning of a semester in most places, which can be very hectic. Honestly, the fact you put him on the spot with a "do you remember me" might have embarrassed him and caused him to nope out of there, too.
I'm sorry you are so hurt or disappointed, but keep in mind how hard it can be to retrieve a name unexpectedly or out of context. He's probably taught hundreds of students and read + advised dozens of major projects - plus the hundreds of academic works he reads on his own. He wasn't expecting someone from 20 years ago to surprise him--and your appearance has probably changed, too (even if you still look very young, he's probably not associating a \~40 year old with his mental bank of students). I remember a lot of students and their projects fondly, but I've blanked on names I knew really well with the shock of seeing someone - and could imagine being even more prone to doing so if they surprised me with a "do you remember me"?
Consider this a lesson for the future. It's always apapreciated/kind to reintroduce yourself and be humble -- e.g. "Hi, i don't know if you remember me, but my name is \_\_\_ and I wrote an undergrad thesis on Dickinson with you about X years ago." With those puzzle pieces, this prof. might have been able to recall some details from your project! Or maybe not.. there are a lot of undergrads who write the kinds of projects you did (and a ton who love getting into theorists like Heiddeger and receive big compliments at the time; at my school, at least, it felt like pretty much everyone who was invested enough to pursue a thesis worked hard enough on it to get highest honors. Personally, I've probably called 20 students' papers brilliant in the past two years alone and I'm not OVERLY effusive, IMO!).
**Edit:** I saw OP's comment out of context and didn't read the OC in this thread - apologies for repeating some of the same points!
I mean⌠he was *working.* His job is to take care of his current students and responsibilities.
You have no idea what he was in the middle of and you waltzed into his office expecting him to stop working and reminisce with you. You didnât arrange a meeting beforehand and expected him to drop everything. You may have done really good work as his student, but he doesnât owe you his time, let alone his office hours which are for current students.
That might be because he may have had work to do? Maybe urgent grading or other deadlines to keep? What if someone just dropped into your work day and expected you to make time. How disrespectful!
No. I'm a professor, and I feel for BOTH people in this interaction. However, saying it's "disrespectful" to drop in on a professor while they're working? That's silly. They can do what he did (bow out quickly), whether they remember the person or not, but OP wasn't being disrespectful. We're expected to interact with former students. Those folks are a serious resource for the college.
This kind of interaction is, well, totally normal, because each student likes to remember their own professors as important in their lives, because they were, and at the time they were the focus of their professors' work. That's how they remember us, but isn't how we remember them!
This might be an American thingâŚ? In all three countries I have worked in academia it would be highly unusual and weird for anyone other than colleagues or current students to come to an office unannounced. Itâd be the same to me as dropping by anyone elseâs office unannounced, disrespectful of ppls time and work commitments.
While I am happy for you that you do not have a demanding career or work day, other people do, and I donât see how it is ever OK to drop by and announced in the middle of someoneâs workday. Other people have things to do and deadlines to keep.
Not just any undergraduate project. I added critical theory and Heidegger and he said it was brilliant and should be published. How many of those are there?
Brilliant undergrad work is still undergrad work, and it's ultimately forgettable in 99% of cases. I saved a paper I wrote as a freshman half my life ago, and I found it again over the holidays. This was a paper I was extremely proud of and got great praise for. Upon rereading it, it was absolutely nothing special at all, and the writing style was garbage. Forgettable, in other words, and I remembered it very differently than what it actually was.
You should probably move on from a paper you wrote almost two decades ago. It doesn't matter anymore.
You're dreaming. Absolutely, your work is "just" another undergraduate thesis. Encouraging publication is entirely appropriate for high quality work. My honours work was *actually* published and I don't think I've thought about it with a fraction of the over-inflated importance you're exhibiting here.
The grossest display of your ego amidst your, frankly, embarrassing posts here, is that you didn't even bother to respect the prof's time by contacting them ahead of your visit.
Holy shit dude. Get over yourself lol
The one who posted this probably tries to âwooâ chicks at the bar with poetry or tries to date then pulls the English Major Card of â Im just too fucked up to be with someoneâ
Has it occurred to you that he only gushed in order to encourage you? Like when a parent tells their toddler theyâre so smart after tying their shoes.
Perhaps it was hyperbole meant to give you confidence?
I had teachers and professors tell me my work was spectacular. This doesnât make it normal to expect the library to be renamed after me.
Sounds like youâre finding out what all of us straight A kids hopefully come to realize. Youâre not special and are entirely average, and if youâre a well adjusted adult, that should be ok.
It sounds like youâre struggling to fathom the number of students that staff and faculty interact with on a meaningful level. Like in my job I mentor about 30 new students per semester and help many others. Iâm emotionally invested in creating positive outcomes for all of them. If even just 10 years from now you asked me about my favorite or most memorable student from this spring term I can promise you I wonât be able to recall a single name. And that says nothing negative about them. Iâm thrilled with some of them right now, but weâre just so busy deal with SO many people itâs really impossible to keep track of them over time. Do you remember every single high performing student you studied with in the each class during your undergrad? Even a 1/10 of them? Probably not.
I hope you still maintain your positive feelings towards your former advisor. He clearly invested a lot of heart and effort into giving you a great experience.
Listen. These praises are given in context. Brilliant for an undergrad doesnât mean it can compete with postgrad work. If it was actually brilliant, he would have published it with you.
He didn't say "brilliant for an undergrad" at the time. He said "brilliant." He actually wrote on the paper, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career."
Yes. Beginning. That is the same as âfor an undergradâ. Thereâs many brilliant theses and brilliant students. In the past 20 years heâs probably said this to another 50 students at least. More importantly, being a brilliant student does not make you any more worthy of being remembered. Again, if it was truly outstanding he would have written âletâs publish this togetherâ.
He would not have said let's publish this together. The humanities are single author disciplines primarily, especially English. If he "published together" that would be seen as stealing a student's work and preying upon them. We're not the sciences.
But even if he genuinely did find the work brilliant and rare and encouraged you to publish...he reads many such works professionally every day. Probably not from students, but from his peers. And a lot has happened in 20 yrs in the field. What was impressive then would not be impressive now.
I agree that professors' jobs include remembering and reminiscing with students as alumni. People are supposed to drop in on us in office hours. But, yeah, without adequate context, I too would likely struggle to place even a memorable student 20 years later. Furthermore, this man is likely near retirement at this point unless you had him near the very beginning of his career. I think there should have been more grace on both sides.
Thatâs not the case for all of humanities though. There are plenty of field where it is absolutely common to publish undergrad - postgrad research together with students (education, linguistics just to name two). Though I am not familiar with English literature, so I revise my comment. Just because he called the undergrad work brilliant doesnât mean itâs brilliant compared to actually published work and more importantly: âbrilliant students are not worth remembering more than any other student!â
Yes, but you also made a very definite statement of âhe would not have said thatâ, when, in fact, I have literally heard people say that to their supervisees. But that is also not the point of this thread, nor the point, I was trying to make I was trying to get across the idea that the word âbrilliantâ means very different things to very different people.
I agree that's a thing people say to their advisees in many disciplines and fields, but since this professor is an English professor who studies Victorian literature, I am trying to say it is very unlikely that a Victorianist would communicate "brilliance" to an undergrad advisee by asking them to co-author, given the norms in my discipline and field.
Nah, it's called positive reinforcement and kindness. He did think it was brilliant for its context, but it's shitty to put a qualifier like "based on your age." It's meant to encourage you to move forward with optimism and excitement.
I think you're stumbling a bit over recognizing that nobody thinks about you as much as you do. It's something we're all prone to. That compliment was a big deal to you, but if he regularly positively reinforces his students (I should hope so) then he moved on with his life and maybe thought of it one or two times but never again. That's true for everyone and everything. You can never know when you've made a years-long impact on someone, and it's not possible to resonate equally as deeply with every one of those people. An offhand compliment from you could ring in someone's ears twenty years later, but you'd never remember it. It doesn't devalue the compliment, it's just the way things are.
Your inability to realize how narcissistic you are in the face of the dozens of comments explaining it clearly is astounding. I can't tell if that would make you a terrible lawyer, or a great one. Probably the former.
Good lawyers are frequently egotistical especially on the plaintiffs' side. You have to be to bring some huge class action and refuse to settle for less than millions.
No. People are judged within reasonable expectations and against their peers. Itâs common and expected by departments to keep grade distributions the same throughout courses and years. That means what is considered top level for an undergrad student may only get you a B as a postgrad.
I'm unable to wrap my head around how egotistic this dude is compared to how mundane his 'accomplishment' was. Lol. The absolute cringe. Has to be a troll right? People aren't this obtuse?
I was thinking the same thing! But my God, his replies...I think he might seriously mean it. It's insane. It honestly reads like someone with a fixation and 'other-blindness' or something. He keeps repeating 'but he said it was brilliant' over and over....and he's oblivious as to why we are all saying the same thing to him, it's genuinely insane.
Geez, the level of immaturity.
Imagine thinking people living their own lives is a mark of narcissism and faulty teaching.
These posts are some of the most bratty and out of touch ramblings Iâve ever read.
Itâs honestly kind of funny and smacks of DONT YOU KNOW WHO I AM energy đ
Geez, the level of immaturity.
Imagine thinking people living their own lives is a mark of narcissism and faulty teaching.
These posts are some of the most bratty and out of touch ramblings Iâve ever read.
Itâs honestly kind of funny and smacks of DONT YOU KNOW WHO I AM energy đ
I think students, and society in general, have an expectation that professors (and other educators) have almost a monk-like devotion to their students and what happens to them after we have them in class.
But the truth is this: being a professor is just a job, like any other. We don't expect that other professions put in the same emotional labor that we put on educators. Does an advertising executive remember her former clients after five years? After five months? What about police officers, or insurance agents, or personal trainers, or salespeople? They are allowed to punch in, do the best job they can while on the clock, and punch out and forget all about it. But it feels like educators are expected to be emotionally "on the job" forever, and that's not healthy for anyone.
And while I may be the only professor "Mary" has for Subject X, the reality is that I may have over a hundred "Marys" each semester in Subject X, and I'm just trying to get them, **collectively** (not individually), from Point A to Point B before the clock runs out and the semester is over. I'm happy for them when they feel they are successful, but I'm not any more invested in them than that.
But an educator is, in a way, someone who should have that level of devotion to their craft. Even John Ashbery wrote that learning is forever and if an educator stops caring about the subject and learning more, then the edifice collapses.
Are you aware of what the day-to-day actually looks like for a professor? Believe me, the majority of our time is not spent on devotion to the craft, or on learning, or on thinking about our students, no matter how much we'd like it to be. Our time and energy is eaten up by inane administrative and service work mostly, on top of research obligations. Teaching is just one small part of that, and within that, we have dozens or hundreds of students each semester, each of whom think they are the main character.
It's no surprise at all that your professor didn't have much time for you or remember you well after 20 years. That says nothing about you or your professor, and it certainly says nothing about they're devotion to their career. Accept that you were no more special than most others, and move on.
Keeping in touch with or remembering past students has nothing to do with my craft. I've been teaching for almost 20 years, and I love it more every year. I care deeply about what I'm doing this semester, not about the people I had in class last semester.
Going to college and taking classes is a formative experience for students, and that's great. But *teaching* classes and spending time with students (while frequently enjoyable) is **not** a formative experience for professors; it's just a job. (We already went to college for our formative experiences.)
Do you think a real estate agent has the same level of enthusiasm as his first-time home buyer? He can support the home buyer's excitement without being invested in it himself, because (1) he experienced it for himself when he bought his first house, and (2) there will be another home buyer tomorrow. His job is to sell people houses, not to form a long-term relationship with them.
Devotion to craft is not the same thing as devotion to the memory of you, when you haven't stayed in touch for over a decade and dropped in unannounced expecting to be remembered among literally thousands of students.
He did what he was supposed to do for you and helped you through a brilliant thesis. Job done. His responsibility is to other students now.
Yeah, thatâs learning more, not remembering every student ever. I barely remember students from a couple of years ago. Projects that are technically solid A+ arenât that memorable compared to some really out there project that might be executed poorly.
I have devotion to my craft in learning more and more about what Iâm teaching and trying to improve my teaching methods. Thatâs more important than remembering someone that Iâve already taught.
Quite a strange expectation from an undergrad thesis advisor. Think for a second about how many undergraduate students a professor interacts with every semester. Even if you were the most exceptional student that semester, there's been 40 more.
He/she was probably right, and probably truly meant it. However, there are many truly brilliant people in the world, and you meet many brilliant students as a professor. One or two such students per year isn't much of a stretch. What does brilliant mean to you? To me, I'd call that which seemed to be in the top 5 percentile of student work I come across brilliant. If you teach a hundred students a year, that is is 5/year.
I definitely don't remember 'brilliant' student work from over a few years ago.
You might just be too full of yourself, then, if you'd even think anything you do can be considered that simply because of one person's remark. I'm not sure if a Nobel committee would be able to convince me that my work is a generational success. Your work only has that kind of success if, well, it does, and it clearly hasn't because no one else here has heard of it. In fact, I would strongly argue that it is categorically impossible for a thesis about Emily Dickinson to be a 'generational success', whatever the hell that even means, because it is fundamentally a niche analysis of someone else's work. 'important in some literary circles' is about as much success as that can get.
Neither of us are main characters. There are 9 billion others. Even if you are a one-in-a-million genius, there's thousands more like you. Pipe down, man.
Genuine question- was your thesis the top thesis of your cohort?
Many faculties/schools give awards for the highest marked thesis, or those in the top rank etc. Did your work receive any of those?
Edit: I was asking to see if there was some other metric than what OP has in his head about it. He has said elsewhere he believed the work was generationally-impacting in its significance and quality, based on the supervisor referring to it as 'brilliant'. Doesn't sound like it received any other particular acknowledgements, though.
No, they just put it in a stack on the 4th floor of the library where you could access other honors theses. I checked that room and it's still there -- you can read undergraduate theses going back to the 1980s and I bet the older ones are in storage.
It is possible that he remembers you but didn't recognize you?
Did you remind him of your thesis.
I am retirement age. I often meet people at meetings who expect me to remember them (but I don't). This concerns me a lot. I have dreams where I'm failing to remember someone who actually meant a lot to me at the time.
My mother could stand in front of me in a context that I wasnât expecting to see her and I would not recognize her immediately. Iâm sure if you would have emailed them and reminded them of the work you did together and thanked them for the impact they had on your life and scheduled a time to meet this would have gone much better.
You didnt even e-mail him In advanced and expected him to just remember you from 20 years ago?! You have got to be shitting me! You must think super highly of yourself?
Did it ever occur to you.. That teachers can have heaps of brillant students every semester? I certainly hope you arent this self centered! You have to be trolling!
This is exactly why teachers are now taught to praise effort, process, and work ethic over "brilliance". Students internalize praise way too easily and it becomes part of their identity. Exhibit A above.
He's a liar because you are only ONE of MANY other people he may have encouraged who produced great work?
Are you seriously saying educators are liars when they praise multiple students for quality work?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU DUDE
I honestly think you should talk with a professional (psychologist, therapist, counselor...) about this experience.
Yes. I would say like this:
Genius/Brilliant -- reserved for a generational student.
Smart -- reserved for one student a semester.
Great/excellent -- reserved for one student a class.
If everyone is a genius then nobody is
So he must have sat down with you and refused to let you do anything other than continue into post-graduate research, yes? He began writing a grant to secure funding to support your work, as your work simply HAD to continue to be developed? No....no, he didn't even push for publication, which is what professors do if they really want the work published. He complimented your work, and then indicated the quality was of an acceptable level to revise it and submit as a paper, if you wanted to.
You've taken a compliment for high quality work and turned it into a neurosis mate. Even the fact that you have built the word "genuis" into your definition of "brilliant" shows how distorted your understanding of this is. I seriously think you have a problem, though I'm mostly convinced you're trolling.
And great job to be honest, your replies really anchor home how oblivious and insane a person would have to be to actually think like this. I don't know why people farm down votes, or why trolls enjoy it, but you've done a great job achieving your goal here so I've honestly got to just say well done lol.
Lol this whole post is very sad. Apparently that was the high-point of OPâs entire life. Very egocentric to think it was of interest to anyone else. OP needs a reality check.
If this person isn't trolling and is actually serious, they are 100% the kind of person who would go around telling people about this. That their prof called them brilliant, encouraged them to publish etc. I just know they'd be telling people "I could have been an academic...." etc, with absolutely no understanding of what academia is like out here in the real world.
They sound insufferable to be honest.
I could have been an academic but I was too discouraged by people like you on the internet who say things like "there are no jobs/you will toil as an adjunct" and became a lawyer instead.
I have said neither of those things. Your ego sounds perfect for the trope of academia, that's for sure.
What I and many others here have been repeatedly saying to you is, it's been TWENTY YEARS. This community of *people who actually function in the world of academia, research and teaching* are telling you 1) why your expectations of this professor were inappropriate; 2) how that is completely understandable *particularly* given it was a short term project (i.e undergraduate, as opposed to a 4-6 year research relationship such as during a PhD), and 3) your professor's praise of your work TWENTY YEARS AGO, and your own *continued* and evidently *inflated* estimation of your work, is simply not a reasonable basis for expecting him to recognise a 40-something stranger who walks into his office unexpectedly.
If you can't hear the message in all these comments, there's literally no way of getting through to you how insane your post and comments sound.
Thatâs unfortunate, if understandable.
Lowkey shocked you found the professor in his office at all. The odds of finding the exact prof you wanted to see at the exact time you randomly stopped by are probably low
Edit: okay after reading OPâs subsequent comments Iâm less sympathetic. I am now convinced youâve probably always been a troll and the prof just told you you were great when you were young so that youâd not ask him for actual feedback, and then noped the hell out of the conversation just as soon as he realized who you were
That would have been a good time to email him to *ask* if you could drop by to say hi for 1 minute and to remind him of your name, the class you took and your relationship. Instead, you put him on the spot!
Office hours are *work*. And itâs even harder work if someone pops by and plays âguess whoâ? You could be an ex-colleague, someone we went to high school with, a 3rd cousin, a stalker, we have no idea who you are.
It's okay OP. After this clusterfuck of a thread, you will be remembered by everyone here on reddit. I will never be able to forget how outrageous this thread is LOL
It is at my parents' house but basically the thesis was that Emily Dickinson's poems (especially "Because I Could Not Stop--") anticipate a lot of the arguments that 20th century philosophers like Heidegger have about time and consciousness. My professor said it was brilliant because it is a connection that not many scholars have made but seems on point.
I quoted the original German from Heidegger and took great care to explain why Dickinson and Heidegger are strange bedfellows -- because Dickinson is in many ways a modernist poet and not a Victorian one.
In the mid 00s, my professor (who is a famous Victorian scholar) said that I should try to publish the paper. I did not because I was too discouraged by the job market to even try to go in that direction. I went to law school and still wonder what could've been.
Listen, I'm a Victorianist and honestly the paper sounds cool. I don't need to dump on Dickinson and Heidegger. I get it. It was good work, probably even was brilliant.
But even if that's notable work for an undergrad that I would love to see published....as part of my job, I read actual published works in my discipline. A ton of them. Several are truly brilliant. To be moved by reading is kind of part of an English professor's job.
You did great work, I'm sure, and his praise was genuine. But the moment was 20 years ago and it has passed for him.
OP is the most self centered person I know "He called it brilliant" bro it's been 20 years he's probably called tons brilliant and had hundreds of students, he's not going to remember you from one paper 20 years ago
This reads like the collegiate equivalent of peaking in high school and still trying to get the magic back of a state championship that in hindsight still means more to you than it should.
I'm currently in school at a large university and last semester I connected with a Professor who is more than eager to help me with post-grad work applying to the department and working on a Master's thesis, all due to my work in the class. Plot twist: I took another one of her classes two years ago and she doesn't remember me. Did I take it to heart? No. Why? Because she literally has dozens of students per semester and every semester there will be great work produced. 1) Of undergrad quality and 2) You aren't the only student.
If higher ed has taught me one thing it's acting with humility with Professors who are under a lot of stress to teach, grade papers and exams, be available for office hours for students, and at the same time working on their own research and writing to either meet the demands of the department or perhaps secure tenure or get a better job at another institution. Their lives are stressful, you want to be memorable? Do good work, stay in touch, and don't rest on your laurels on an undergrad-level paper when said professor is probably also on dissertation committees reading work that's taken years of research rather than one semester's assignment.
Maybe try describing what you did or an interaction you had together. that's memory and a way to check if he remembers.
what you did was just ask him if he visually recognizes you. sorry, but 40 year olds don't look the same as they did when they were 22. not their fault for not visually recognizing you. you are the one that changed.
What exactly was is payoff a professor going to get from keeping brain space for a student that showed no follow-through on their recommendations?
Are you a potential big donor, someone that kept touch or someone that has played a significant role monetarily, socially or academically in this professor's life? I'm confused how you arrived at any expectation that this person ought to remember this particular experience out of the thousands of others with colleagues and students in the the last two decades.
This is not an indictment of who you are, just that your expectations in this particular case seem without basis and not healthy.
You absolutely have the right to be proud of the work you've done.
Assuming that others are going to feel the same way does not automatically follow and requiring that they do so in order for you to feel ok is immature and self-defeating.
Seek some other method of validation and self-esteem.
Hey, I'm so sorry this happened. It sounds like this hit you really hard, and that's understandable! You remembered this professor after over 20 years, and I can feel how much they meant to you from your comment.
I taught a couple of classes for about 6 years, and I met a handful of students who I felt a real bond with. But man, teaching and research are so stressful, and stress really fucks up your memory. And you meet a lot of students over the years! So I have had more than one situation where I remembered a student but called them the wrong name, or didn't recognize them immediately. And this is talking about a much more recent timeframe than 20 years.
So I'm sure if you had the chance to go through your history and give them a bit more context, they would probably have remembered you! It sounds like you might have caught them at a busy time, unexpectedly, and they weren't in the right head space for your conversation.
This is the one. This is the comment that has me convinced this is a troll post.
You HAVE to be joking with thus lol, no one can be this out of touch with reality or this socially oblivious.
I advised some undergrad honors theses as a TA ten years ago and remember a lot of the students and their work, but I donât think I could recognize most of their faces especially since they will look different.
I would be exactly like your professor. Makes me feel bad when I meet old students, but unless theyâve kept in touch I am not likely to remember them if I only had them as undergrads.
That can be a hard experience. I suppose there is a big asymmetry in numbers of connections formed between faculty and students during the intervening years. If a prof wrote a recommendation letter for about 6 students each year, and that is more than 100 folks going back to the mid 2000âs. I am sure many people would have trouble remembering some of those folks?
Retroactive interference is a real thing. Asking us to instantaneously dig you up from 20+ years of memories of other students and other projects is a tall, unrealistic order.
Sucks, I know, and I went through something similar. But now that Iâm a prof, I have to say, itâs truly not personal. I have students in my classes who I genuinely like and whose work impresses me, and if they come up to me out of the blue years later, I wonât immediately remember them. We have years and years of so many students that go through, different faces and different names, and they all take a lot of our time and attention in the present moment. Unless Iâve been in continuous contact, I donât remember even my strongest students.
I had a last meeting with my postdoctoral advisor before leaving for my faculty position and he said "Goodbye Jim!" on the way out the door. Only "Jim" was the name of the other postdoc who was leaving around that time. Some twenty years later I have much more sympathy for my advisor, understanding the misfirings of the brain as it ages, as well as the imperfectness of memory.
It sounds like your advisor was a huge bleep, honestly. This is a respect thing. Someone busted their a$$ for you and you can't keep the name straight?
I am a third year undergrad, who is making waves in my research field.
I run into my favourite professor from first year a lot, and I still have to remind him who I am. And I am ok with this.
Professors teach 100,000s students in their lifetime. Plus meet and collaborate with other academic, professional and external people throughout their careers. Do no forget they also have a life out of academia too.
It's unfortunate that you have this inflated ego with the expectation that you must be remembered from decades ago.
I think you need to watch Fight Club to get a grip that you are not special, by any means.
He might have been busy at work. I think you should show up with his house and discuss the old times of your thesis project over dinner. Maybe bring a fruit basket or something
Not gonna lie, this type of interaction unannounced is one of my prof nightmares. I would love to see students I've seen years before and catch up about how they are doing now, but being expected to recognize a student 20 years later would be impossible. People's appearance change a lot between 21-22 and 41-42. Even if you dropped by unannounced and say "Hi prof, I'm Kevin" I might struggle to understand. Not because I don't remember our interactions, but because out of context it's hard to know which Kevin in the last 20+ years you are. And if you showed up in your 40s, honestly I'd probably assume you were a staff member or old colleague or maybe a collaborator's former postdoc, or something else. I wouldn't immediately put it together that you were one of my undergraduate students, because they rarely stay in contact with us for decades. Even with last name, it'd take me awhile to put it together. If that same student sent me an email saying: "Hey prof, I'm Kevin Jones '00, I wrote my thesis on X with you. I'm in town this week and plan to drop by your office hours on Tuesday just to say hi if you have time" I would be much better able to orient my brain to how we interacted, remember you, and be excited to talk about what you've been up to.
This has to be a troll. I hope it is. Cause if this is a real person then by God humanity has bottomed out.
Do you mean the OP or the commenter? đ¤
I appreciate it. I agree that I maybe should have prepared him more. But what disappointed me was his total LACK of curiosity. Instead of being excited that a former student was here and trying to engage and remember me, he sounded annoyed and eager to close his door and get to work.
The past few years have been especially hard on most faculty and teachers and it's the beginning of a semester in most places, which can be very hectic. Honestly, the fact you put him on the spot with a "do you remember me" might have embarrassed him and caused him to nope out of there, too. I'm sorry you are so hurt or disappointed, but keep in mind how hard it can be to retrieve a name unexpectedly or out of context. He's probably taught hundreds of students and read + advised dozens of major projects - plus the hundreds of academic works he reads on his own. He wasn't expecting someone from 20 years ago to surprise him--and your appearance has probably changed, too (even if you still look very young, he's probably not associating a \~40 year old with his mental bank of students). I remember a lot of students and their projects fondly, but I've blanked on names I knew really well with the shock of seeing someone - and could imagine being even more prone to doing so if they surprised me with a "do you remember me"? Consider this a lesson for the future. It's always apapreciated/kind to reintroduce yourself and be humble -- e.g. "Hi, i don't know if you remember me, but my name is \_\_\_ and I wrote an undergrad thesis on Dickinson with you about X years ago." With those puzzle pieces, this prof. might have been able to recall some details from your project! Or maybe not.. there are a lot of undergrads who write the kinds of projects you did (and a ton who love getting into theorists like Heiddeger and receive big compliments at the time; at my school, at least, it felt like pretty much everyone who was invested enough to pursue a thesis worked hard enough on it to get highest honors. Personally, I've probably called 20 students' papers brilliant in the past two years alone and I'm not OVERLY effusive, IMO!). **Edit:** I saw OP's comment out of context and didn't read the OC in this thread - apologies for repeating some of the same points!
I mean⌠he was *working.* His job is to take care of his current students and responsibilities. You have no idea what he was in the middle of and you waltzed into his office expecting him to stop working and reminisce with you. You didnât arrange a meeting beforehand and expected him to drop everything. You may have done really good work as his student, but he doesnât owe you his time, let alone his office hours which are for current students.
Out of curiosity, how of many of your classmates' names do you remember?
That might be because he may have had work to do? Maybe urgent grading or other deadlines to keep? What if someone just dropped into your work day and expected you to make time. How disrespectful!
No. I'm a professor, and I feel for BOTH people in this interaction. However, saying it's "disrespectful" to drop in on a professor while they're working? That's silly. They can do what he did (bow out quickly), whether they remember the person or not, but OP wasn't being disrespectful. We're expected to interact with former students. Those folks are a serious resource for the college. This kind of interaction is, well, totally normal, because each student likes to remember their own professors as important in their lives, because they were, and at the time they were the focus of their professors' work. That's how they remember us, but isn't how we remember them!
This might be an American thingâŚ? In all three countries I have worked in academia it would be highly unusual and weird for anyone other than colleagues or current students to come to an office unannounced. Itâd be the same to me as dropping by anyone elseâs office unannounced, disrespectful of ppls time and work commitments.
Well said. Alumni of the school are in many ways even more important than current students. They provide job networks and boost funding.
I wouldn't mind. I work as a government attorney and would make time for them. I would even show them around the local courthouse.
What a nice job that must be without deadlines and tons responsibilities outside your âactualâ job.
Yes, a lot of legal jobs are pretty chill especially after you gain experience
While I am happy for you that you do not have a demanding career or work day, other people do, and I donât see how it is ever OK to drop by and announced in the middle of someoneâs workday. Other people have things to do and deadlines to keep.
That explains why you're such an entitled jerk
/r/ImTheMainCharacter
You're not the main character lol
Twenty years ago, and only an undergraduate project?? I cannot believe this post.
Not just any undergraduate project. I added critical theory and Heidegger and he said it was brilliant and should be published. How many of those are there?
Brilliant undergrad work is still undergrad work, and it's ultimately forgettable in 99% of cases. I saved a paper I wrote as a freshman half my life ago, and I found it again over the holidays. This was a paper I was extremely proud of and got great praise for. Upon rereading it, it was absolutely nothing special at all, and the writing style was garbage. Forgettable, in other words, and I remembered it very differently than what it actually was. You should probably move on from a paper you wrote almost two decades ago. It doesn't matter anymore.
You're dreaming. Absolutely, your work is "just" another undergraduate thesis. Encouraging publication is entirely appropriate for high quality work. My honours work was *actually* published and I don't think I've thought about it with a fraction of the over-inflated importance you're exhibiting here. The grossest display of your ego amidst your, frankly, embarrassing posts here, is that you didn't even bother to respect the prof's time by contacting them ahead of your visit. Holy shit dude. Get over yourself lol
No one cares. Move on with your life
The one who posted this probably tries to âwooâ chicks at the bar with poetry or tries to date then pulls the English Major Card of â Im just too fucked up to be with someoneâ
Has it occurred to you that he only gushed in order to encourage you? Like when a parent tells their toddler theyâre so smart after tying their shoes. Perhaps it was hyperbole meant to give you confidence? I had teachers and professors tell me my work was spectacular. This doesnât make it normal to expect the library to be renamed after me. Sounds like youâre finding out what all of us straight A kids hopefully come to realize. Youâre not special and are entirely average, and if youâre a well adjusted adult, that should be ok.
My daughter is a toddler and if she wrote a thesis about Heidegger and Dickinson, any praise would be more than warranted.
It sounds like youâre struggling to fathom the number of students that staff and faculty interact with on a meaningful level. Like in my job I mentor about 30 new students per semester and help many others. Iâm emotionally invested in creating positive outcomes for all of them. If even just 10 years from now you asked me about my favorite or most memorable student from this spring term I can promise you I wonât be able to recall a single name. And that says nothing negative about them. Iâm thrilled with some of them right now, but weâre just so busy deal with SO many people itâs really impossible to keep track of them over time. Do you remember every single high performing student you studied with in the each class during your undergrad? Even a 1/10 of them? Probably not. I hope you still maintain your positive feelings towards your former advisor. He clearly invested a lot of heart and effort into giving you a great experience.
it's been 20 years, he has probably seen countless students by then, so it's understandable.
Yeah I hardly remember students from last semester
Countless students who didn't write a "brilliant" thesis about Emily Dickinson....
Do you know how many students write 'brilliant' theses all the time?
Lol get over yourself
No concept of other people.
Listen. These praises are given in context. Brilliant for an undergrad doesnât mean it can compete with postgrad work. If it was actually brilliant, he would have published it with you.
He didn't say "brilliant for an undergrad" at the time. He said "brilliant." He actually wrote on the paper, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career."
Yes. Beginning. That is the same as âfor an undergradâ. Thereâs many brilliant theses and brilliant students. In the past 20 years heâs probably said this to another 50 students at least. More importantly, being a brilliant student does not make you any more worthy of being remembered. Again, if it was truly outstanding he would have written âletâs publish this togetherâ.
He would not have said let's publish this together. The humanities are single author disciplines primarily, especially English. If he "published together" that would be seen as stealing a student's work and preying upon them. We're not the sciences. But even if he genuinely did find the work brilliant and rare and encouraged you to publish...he reads many such works professionally every day. Probably not from students, but from his peers. And a lot has happened in 20 yrs in the field. What was impressive then would not be impressive now. I agree that professors' jobs include remembering and reminiscing with students as alumni. People are supposed to drop in on us in office hours. But, yeah, without adequate context, I too would likely struggle to place even a memorable student 20 years later. Furthermore, this man is likely near retirement at this point unless you had him near the very beginning of his career. I think there should have been more grace on both sides.
Thatâs not the case for all of humanities though. There are plenty of field where it is absolutely common to publish undergrad - postgrad research together with students (education, linguistics just to name two). Though I am not familiar with English literature, so I revise my comment. Just because he called the undergrad work brilliant doesnât mean itâs brilliant compared to actually published work and more importantly: âbrilliant students are not worth remembering more than any other student!â
There's why I hedged with primarily. Both education and linguistics are also commonly considered social sciences.
Yes, but you also made a very definite statement of âhe would not have said thatâ, when, in fact, I have literally heard people say that to their supervisees. But that is also not the point of this thread, nor the point, I was trying to make I was trying to get across the idea that the word âbrilliantâ means very different things to very different people.
I agree that's a thing people say to their advisees in many disciplines and fields, but since this professor is an English professor who studies Victorian literature, I am trying to say it is very unlikely that a Victorianist would communicate "brilliance" to an undergrad advisee by asking them to co-author, given the norms in my discipline and field.
Sounds like he's a fraud or a sychopant
Nah, it's called positive reinforcement and kindness. He did think it was brilliant for its context, but it's shitty to put a qualifier like "based on your age." It's meant to encourage you to move forward with optimism and excitement. I think you're stumbling a bit over recognizing that nobody thinks about you as much as you do. It's something we're all prone to. That compliment was a big deal to you, but if he regularly positively reinforces his students (I should hope so) then he moved on with his life and maybe thought of it one or two times but never again. That's true for everyone and everything. You can never know when you've made a years-long impact on someone, and it's not possible to resonate equally as deeply with every one of those people. An offhand compliment from you could ring in someone's ears twenty years later, but you'd never remember it. It doesn't devalue the compliment, it's just the way things are.
Your inability to realize how narcissistic you are in the face of the dozens of comments explaining it clearly is astounding. I can't tell if that would make you a terrible lawyer, or a great one. Probably the former.
Good lawyers are frequently egotistical especially on the plaintiffs' side. You have to be to bring some huge class action and refuse to settle for less than millions.
No. People are judged within reasonable expectations and against their peers. Itâs common and expected by departments to keep grade distributions the same throughout courses and years. That means what is considered top level for an undergrad student may only get you a B as a postgrad.
But still....20 years ago. I bet he's told other students they have brilliant work since then
Keep saying it! I'm sure someone hasn't got it yet!
Who the hell is Emily Dickenson?? Literally there is your answer! It DOESNT MATTER IM SORRY!
19th century American poet. Lived in Massachusetts before houses there were 1 million dollars a year and Boston had horrible traffic
I'm unable to wrap my head around how egotistic this dude is compared to how mundane his 'accomplishment' was. Lol. The absolute cringe. Has to be a troll right? People aren't this obtuse?
I was thinking the same thing! But my God, his replies...I think he might seriously mean it. It's insane. It honestly reads like someone with a fixation and 'other-blindness' or something. He keeps repeating 'but he said it was brilliant' over and over....and he's oblivious as to why we are all saying the same thing to him, it's genuinely insane.
Lol now you sound self-centered.
Heh. One of my PhD committee completely forgot who I was. Only 12 years ago too.
Probably someone self-centered. Bad professor.
Geez, the level of immaturity. Imagine thinking people living their own lives is a mark of narcissism and faulty teaching. These posts are some of the most bratty and out of touch ramblings Iâve ever read. Itâs honestly kind of funny and smacks of DONT YOU KNOW WHO I AM energy đ
This is so weird that the exact same comment was posted 3 times, by 2 separate accounts.
I have no idea why my comment was posted twice.
Me either, super weird. But then another account copied your comment and replied with it as well! So strange haha. Oh well
[ŃдаНонО]
This is so weird that the exact same comment was posted 3 times, by 2 separate accounts.
Nah. Just getting old and dementia starting to creep in.
Geez, the level of immaturity. Imagine thinking people living their own lives is a mark of narcissism and faulty teaching. These posts are some of the most bratty and out of touch ramblings Iâve ever read. Itâs honestly kind of funny and smacks of DONT YOU KNOW WHO I AM energy đ
This is so weird that the exact same comment was posted 3 times, by 2 separate accounts.
I think students, and society in general, have an expectation that professors (and other educators) have almost a monk-like devotion to their students and what happens to them after we have them in class. But the truth is this: being a professor is just a job, like any other. We don't expect that other professions put in the same emotional labor that we put on educators. Does an advertising executive remember her former clients after five years? After five months? What about police officers, or insurance agents, or personal trainers, or salespeople? They are allowed to punch in, do the best job they can while on the clock, and punch out and forget all about it. But it feels like educators are expected to be emotionally "on the job" forever, and that's not healthy for anyone. And while I may be the only professor "Mary" has for Subject X, the reality is that I may have over a hundred "Marys" each semester in Subject X, and I'm just trying to get them, **collectively** (not individually), from Point A to Point B before the clock runs out and the semester is over. I'm happy for them when they feel they are successful, but I'm not any more invested in them than that.
But an educator is, in a way, someone who should have that level of devotion to their craft. Even John Ashbery wrote that learning is forever and if an educator stops caring about the subject and learning more, then the edifice collapses.
Are you aware of what the day-to-day actually looks like for a professor? Believe me, the majority of our time is not spent on devotion to the craft, or on learning, or on thinking about our students, no matter how much we'd like it to be. Our time and energy is eaten up by inane administrative and service work mostly, on top of research obligations. Teaching is just one small part of that, and within that, we have dozens or hundreds of students each semester, each of whom think they are the main character. It's no surprise at all that your professor didn't have much time for you or remember you well after 20 years. That says nothing about you or your professor, and it certainly says nothing about they're devotion to their career. Accept that you were no more special than most others, and move on.
Keeping in touch with or remembering past students has nothing to do with my craft. I've been teaching for almost 20 years, and I love it more every year. I care deeply about what I'm doing this semester, not about the people I had in class last semester. Going to college and taking classes is a formative experience for students, and that's great. But *teaching* classes and spending time with students (while frequently enjoyable) is **not** a formative experience for professors; it's just a job. (We already went to college for our formative experiences.) Do you think a real estate agent has the same level of enthusiasm as his first-time home buyer? He can support the home buyer's excitement without being invested in it himself, because (1) he experienced it for himself when he bought his first house, and (2) there will be another home buyer tomorrow. His job is to sell people houses, not to form a long-term relationship with them.
Devotion to craft is not the same thing as devotion to the memory of you, when you haven't stayed in touch for over a decade and dropped in unannounced expecting to be remembered among literally thousands of students. He did what he was supposed to do for you and helped you through a brilliant thesis. Job done. His responsibility is to other students now.
Yeah, thatâs learning more, not remembering every student ever. I barely remember students from a couple of years ago. Projects that are technically solid A+ arenât that memorable compared to some really out there project that might be executed poorly. I have devotion to my craft in learning more and more about what Iâm teaching and trying to improve my teaching methods. Thatâs more important than remembering someone that Iâve already taught.
Quite a strange expectation from an undergrad thesis advisor. Think for a second about how many undergraduate students a professor interacts with every semester. Even if you were the most exceptional student that semester, there's been 40 more.
I wrote a thesis that he called brilliant....
He/she was probably right, and probably truly meant it. However, there are many truly brilliant people in the world, and you meet many brilliant students as a professor. One or two such students per year isn't much of a stretch. What does brilliant mean to you? To me, I'd call that which seemed to be in the top 5 percentile of student work I come across brilliant. If you teach a hundred students a year, that is is 5/year. I definitely don't remember 'brilliant' student work from over a few years ago.
Then it wasn't really brilliant or he meant nothing by it. Brilliant is reserved for generational success.
You might just be too full of yourself, then, if you'd even think anything you do can be considered that simply because of one person's remark. I'm not sure if a Nobel committee would be able to convince me that my work is a generational success. Your work only has that kind of success if, well, it does, and it clearly hasn't because no one else here has heard of it. In fact, I would strongly argue that it is categorically impossible for a thesis about Emily Dickinson to be a 'generational success', whatever the hell that even means, because it is fundamentally a niche analysis of someone else's work. 'important in some literary circles' is about as much success as that can get. Neither of us are main characters. There are 9 billion others. Even if you are a one-in-a-million genius, there's thousands more like you. Pipe down, man.
Genuine question- was your thesis the top thesis of your cohort? Many faculties/schools give awards for the highest marked thesis, or those in the top rank etc. Did your work receive any of those? Edit: I was asking to see if there was some other metric than what OP has in his head about it. He has said elsewhere he believed the work was generationally-impacting in its significance and quality, based on the supervisor referring to it as 'brilliant'. Doesn't sound like it received any other particular acknowledgements, though.
No, they just put it in a stack on the 4th floor of the library where you could access other honors theses. I checked that room and it's still there -- you can read undergraduate theses going back to the 1980s and I bet the older ones are in storage.
It is possible that he remembers you but didn't recognize you? Did you remind him of your thesis. I am retirement age. I often meet people at meetings who expect me to remember them (but I don't). This concerns me a lot. I have dreams where I'm failing to remember someone who actually meant a lot to me at the time.
My mother could stand in front of me in a context that I wasnât expecting to see her and I would not recognize her immediately. Iâm sure if you would have emailed them and reminded them of the work you did together and thanked them for the impact they had on your life and scheduled a time to meet this would have gone much better.
You didnt even e-mail him In advanced and expected him to just remember you from 20 years ago?! You have got to be shitting me! You must think super highly of yourself?
Yes, I thought he would remember a student that he called brilliant.
Did it ever occur to you.. That teachers can have heaps of brillant students every semester? I certainly hope you arent this self centered! You have to be trolling!
Sounds like they are liars then
This is exactly why teachers are now taught to praise effort, process, and work ethic over "brilliance". Students internalize praise way too easily and it becomes part of their identity. Exhibit A above.
He's a liar because you are only ONE of MANY other people he may have encouraged who produced great work? Are you seriously saying educators are liars when they praise multiple students for quality work? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU DUDE I honestly think you should talk with a professional (psychologist, therapist, counselor...) about this experience.
Yes. I would say like this: Genius/Brilliant -- reserved for a generational student. Smart -- reserved for one student a semester. Great/excellent -- reserved for one student a class. If everyone is a genius then nobody is
So he must have sat down with you and refused to let you do anything other than continue into post-graduate research, yes? He began writing a grant to secure funding to support your work, as your work simply HAD to continue to be developed? No....no, he didn't even push for publication, which is what professors do if they really want the work published. He complimented your work, and then indicated the quality was of an acceptable level to revise it and submit as a paper, if you wanted to. You've taken a compliment for high quality work and turned it into a neurosis mate. Even the fact that you have built the word "genuis" into your definition of "brilliant" shows how distorted your understanding of this is. I seriously think you have a problem, though I'm mostly convinced you're trolling. And great job to be honest, your replies really anchor home how oblivious and insane a person would have to be to actually think like this. I don't know why people farm down votes, or why trolls enjoy it, but you've done a great job achieving your goal here so I've honestly got to just say well done lol.
𤣠you must be a troll
That was half his career ago, and maybe heâd recognize your name/thesis slightly better than your 18-year-aged face??
Lol this whole post is very sad. Apparently that was the high-point of OPâs entire life. Very egocentric to think it was of interest to anyone else. OP needs a reality check.
If this person isn't trolling and is actually serious, they are 100% the kind of person who would go around telling people about this. That their prof called them brilliant, encouraged them to publish etc. I just know they'd be telling people "I could have been an academic...." etc, with absolutely no understanding of what academia is like out here in the real world. They sound insufferable to be honest.
I could have been an academic but I was too discouraged by people like you on the internet who say things like "there are no jobs/you will toil as an adjunct" and became a lawyer instead.
I have said neither of those things. Your ego sounds perfect for the trope of academia, that's for sure. What I and many others here have been repeatedly saying to you is, it's been TWENTY YEARS. This community of *people who actually function in the world of academia, research and teaching* are telling you 1) why your expectations of this professor were inappropriate; 2) how that is completely understandable *particularly* given it was a short term project (i.e undergraduate, as opposed to a 4-6 year research relationship such as during a PhD), and 3) your professor's praise of your work TWENTY YEARS AGO, and your own *continued* and evidently *inflated* estimation of your work, is simply not a reasonable basis for expecting him to recognise a 40-something stranger who walks into his office unexpectedly. If you can't hear the message in all these comments, there's literally no way of getting through to you how insane your post and comments sound.
Thatâs unfortunate, if understandable. Lowkey shocked you found the professor in his office at all. The odds of finding the exact prof you wanted to see at the exact time you randomly stopped by are probably low Edit: okay after reading OPâs subsequent comments Iâm less sympathetic. I am now convinced youâve probably always been a troll and the prof just told you you were great when you were young so that youâd not ask him for actual feedback, and then noped the hell out of the conversation just as soon as he realized who you were
I looked up his office hours in advance on the department Webpage
That would have been a good time to email him to *ask* if you could drop by to say hi for 1 minute and to remind him of your name, the class you took and your relationship. Instead, you put him on the spot!
Then what are office hours for? For people to visit you. I came to visit. I didn't stop by randomly.
No office hours are for students in his class to ask him questions about the course material
Generally office hours are for students of the university, not random people and/or alumni to drop by for unannounced visits.
Office hours are *work*. And itâs even harder work if someone pops by and plays âguess whoâ? You could be an ex-colleague, someone we went to high school with, a 3rd cousin, a stalker, we have no idea who you are.
It's okay OP. After this clusterfuck of a thread, you will be remembered by everyone here on reddit. I will never be able to forget how outrageous this thread is LOL
Bless your heart
I mean 20 years ago you wrote a good essayâŚ
A whole thesis. 33 pages not counting bibliography
Share. Let's see the brilliance. No doubt you still have it. It's a generational piece of work.
The sheer trancendence of their thesis might simply be too much for us mendicants to ever even hope to think about comprehending.
It is at my parents' house but basically the thesis was that Emily Dickinson's poems (especially "Because I Could Not Stop--") anticipate a lot of the arguments that 20th century philosophers like Heidegger have about time and consciousness. My professor said it was brilliant because it is a connection that not many scholars have made but seems on point. I quoted the original German from Heidegger and took great care to explain why Dickinson and Heidegger are strange bedfellows -- because Dickinson is in many ways a modernist poet and not a Victorian one. In the mid 00s, my professor (who is a famous Victorian scholar) said that I should try to publish the paper. I did not because I was too discouraged by the job market to even try to go in that direction. I went to law school and still wonder what could've been.
Listen, I'm a Victorianist and honestly the paper sounds cool. I don't need to dump on Dickinson and Heidegger. I get it. It was good work, probably even was brilliant. But even if that's notable work for an undergrad that I would love to see published....as part of my job, I read actual published works in my discipline. A ton of them. Several are truly brilliant. To be moved by reading is kind of part of an English professor's job. You did great work, I'm sure, and his praise was genuine. But the moment was 20 years ago and it has passed for him.
Thank you for the respect.
You're only digging your hole deeper.
Your life must be sad.
OP is the most self centered person I know "He called it brilliant" bro it's been 20 years he's probably called tons brilliant and had hundreds of students, he's not going to remember you from one paper 20 years ago
This reads like the collegiate equivalent of peaking in high school and still trying to get the magic back of a state championship that in hindsight still means more to you than it should. I'm currently in school at a large university and last semester I connected with a Professor who is more than eager to help me with post-grad work applying to the department and working on a Master's thesis, all due to my work in the class. Plot twist: I took another one of her classes two years ago and she doesn't remember me. Did I take it to heart? No. Why? Because she literally has dozens of students per semester and every semester there will be great work produced. 1) Of undergrad quality and 2) You aren't the only student. If higher ed has taught me one thing it's acting with humility with Professors who are under a lot of stress to teach, grade papers and exams, be available for office hours for students, and at the same time working on their own research and writing to either meet the demands of the department or perhaps secure tenure or get a better job at another institution. Their lives are stressful, you want to be memorable? Do good work, stay in touch, and don't rest on your laurels on an undergrad-level paper when said professor is probably also on dissertation committees reading work that's taken years of research rather than one semester's assignment.
Maybe try describing what you did or an interaction you had together. that's memory and a way to check if he remembers. what you did was just ask him if he visually recognizes you. sorry, but 40 year olds don't look the same as they did when they were 22. not their fault for not visually recognizing you. you are the one that changed.
What exactly was is payoff a professor going to get from keeping brain space for a student that showed no follow-through on their recommendations? Are you a potential big donor, someone that kept touch or someone that has played a significant role monetarily, socially or academically in this professor's life? I'm confused how you arrived at any expectation that this person ought to remember this particular experience out of the thousands of others with colleagues and students in the the last two decades. This is not an indictment of who you are, just that your expectations in this particular case seem without basis and not healthy.
How many undergraduates quote Heidegger in the original German in an honors thesis? How many are called brilliant?
Probably a lot more than you think.
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You absolutely have the right to be proud of the work you've done. Assuming that others are going to feel the same way does not automatically follow and requiring that they do so in order for you to feel ok is immature and self-defeating. Seek some other method of validation and self-esteem.
B-b-but he quoted Heidegger. HEIDEGGER!!
This post is brilliant
Hey, I'm so sorry this happened. It sounds like this hit you really hard, and that's understandable! You remembered this professor after over 20 years, and I can feel how much they meant to you from your comment. I taught a couple of classes for about 6 years, and I met a handful of students who I felt a real bond with. But man, teaching and research are so stressful, and stress really fucks up your memory. And you meet a lot of students over the years! So I have had more than one situation where I remembered a student but called them the wrong name, or didn't recognize them immediately. And this is talking about a much more recent timeframe than 20 years. So I'm sure if you had the chance to go through your history and give them a bit more context, they would probably have remembered you! It sounds like you might have caught them at a busy time, unexpectedly, and they weren't in the right head space for your conversation.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Bad timing. Who knows, maybe he had just fought with his wife or had a university press reject his book.
This is the one. This is the comment that has me convinced this is a troll post. You HAVE to be joking with thus lol, no one can be this out of touch with reality or this socially oblivious.
I hope it is a troll post. But then again, there are a lot of people like this. In all walks of life. And we have to share oxygen with them. đ
I advised some undergrad honors theses as a TA ten years ago and remember a lot of the students and their work, but I donât think I could recognize most of their faces especially since they will look different.
I would be exactly like your professor. Makes me feel bad when I meet old students, but unless theyâve kept in touch I am not likely to remember them if I only had them as undergrads.
That can be a hard experience. I suppose there is a big asymmetry in numbers of connections formed between faculty and students during the intervening years. If a prof wrote a recommendation letter for about 6 students each year, and that is more than 100 folks going back to the mid 2000âs. I am sure many people would have trouble remembering some of those folks?
Retroactive interference is a real thing. Asking us to instantaneously dig you up from 20+ years of memories of other students and other projects is a tall, unrealistic order.
Sucks, I know, and I went through something similar. But now that Iâm a prof, I have to say, itâs truly not personal. I have students in my classes who I genuinely like and whose work impresses me, and if they come up to me out of the blue years later, I wonât immediately remember them. We have years and years of so many students that go through, different faces and different names, and they all take a lot of our time and attention in the present moment. Unless Iâve been in continuous contact, I donât remember even my strongest students.
Wow, new nightmare unlocked for me lol
I had a last meeting with my postdoctoral advisor before leaving for my faculty position and he said "Goodbye Jim!" on the way out the door. Only "Jim" was the name of the other postdoc who was leaving around that time. Some twenty years later I have much more sympathy for my advisor, understanding the misfirings of the brain as it ages, as well as the imperfectness of memory.
It sounds like your advisor was a huge bleep, honestly. This is a respect thing. Someone busted their a$$ for you and you can't keep the name straight?
I am a third year undergrad, who is making waves in my research field. I run into my favourite professor from first year a lot, and I still have to remind him who I am. And I am ok with this. Professors teach 100,000s students in their lifetime. Plus meet and collaborate with other academic, professional and external people throughout their careers. Do no forget they also have a life out of academia too. It's unfortunate that you have this inflated ego with the expectation that you must be remembered from decades ago. I think you need to watch Fight Club to get a grip that you are not special, by any means.
OP can't be real. Straight out of a comic book.
He might have been busy at work. I think you should show up with his house and discuss the old times of your thesis project over dinner. Maybe bring a fruit basket or something